Artavazd Peleshian, born in 1938, is an Armenian filmmaker. We was produced by the Yerevan Film Studio and released in 1969 in the USSR. About the film, Peleshian said: “If I had meant only the Armenian people, I would not have had the guts to call it We. The Armenian people are a ‘we’ that […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
The Fear of Secular Stagnation
I love the prospect of secular stagnation (raised by Bob Reich) primarily because the answers are so easy: Let’s keep our eyes on the ball. The problem in this picture is that we are capable of producing more goods and services than we want to consume. It’s a problem of too little money chasing too […]
Rebuilding a Demolished Palestinian Home
Day One of the ICAHD Work Camp, July 19, 2010 Rubble covers the tile floor at the site of the demolished home we are beginning to rebuild in the East Jerusalem section of Anata, a Palestinian town divided between occupied “East” Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Activists from the United States, Britain, Germany, […]
The Sentencing of Lynne Stewart
“At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.” — Karl Marx Lynne Stewart is a friend. She used to practice law in New York City. I still do. I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July 19th for her re-sentencing. Judge John […]
Srebrenica 15 Years After: The Politicization of “Genocide”
It has become an annual ritual each July to commemorate the “Srebrenica massacre,” which dates back to July 11-16, 1995. The now institutionalized characterization is that “8,000 [Bosnian Muslim] men and boys” were executed by the Serbs at that time, in “the worst mass killing in Europe since the Second World War.” This memorial is […]
Treasure Islands: Mapping the Geography of Corruption
When is a tax haven not a tax haven? When Mauritius’ Vice Prime Minister Ramakrishna Sithanen says so. “We are a not a tax haven,” stated Sithanen, who is also the country’s Minister of Finance. Ironically, Sithanen would go on to reveal that ring-fenced financial services (FS) — the legal and financial secrecy vehicles facilitating […]
Umberto Digital Haiku No. 2
An interactive cinematic experiment that reinterprets a shot from the film Umberto D by Vittorio de Sica, manipulating it in response to the attention that the viewer devotes to it. Umberto D depicts Italy in 1952 in the middle of a deep recession, a mirror of the current economic crisis. Fernando Nabais, Project Manager, […]
Reading The Politics of Veil
Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. Vii + 208 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $24.94 U.S. (cl), ISBN 978-0-691-1243-5. On March 15, 2004, the French government passed a law banning the wearing of « conspicuous signs » of religious affiliation within public schools. The decision […]
The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Delhi’s Worrying Transformation
Amid spells of heavy monsoon rain and sticky, sweltering heat, Delhi is an anxious city, struggling to meet a deadline. Preparations are furiously underway for the nineteenth Commonwealth Games, to be held in town in less than three months (from October 3-14). Delhi residents expect that their upturned streets, recurrent blackouts and impassable traffic jams […]
Productivity Is Up, So Why Cut Social Programs?
Paul Jay: So, first of all, your take on what the G-20 decided, this idea of cuts in Europe and North America and maybe some expansion in China. And is there some alternative to this? Robert Pollin: Well, the notion of imposing austerity at a moment when we may — may — be slowly […]
What Difference Does a Revolution Make? A Preliminary Contrast of India and China
I. Commonalities At the time of their casting off of colonialism — India gaining independence from Britain in 1947, China putting an end to a century of imperialist domination in 1949 — the two largest countries in Asia shared many common characteristics. Each possessed an enormous continental landmass with a population in the hundreds of […]
The Politics of the Gold Standard in France, 1914-1939
Kenneth Mouré, The Gold Standard Illusion. France, the Bank of France and the International Gold Standard, 1914-1939. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. x + 297 pp. Figures, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $72.00 (cl.) ISBN 019-924904-0. Kenneth Mouré’s new book extends and develops the analysis of his previous study of Bank […]
A New Order in “Greater West Asia”: AfPak to Palestine
When the Soviet Union was in terminal crisis in 1990 and the prospect emerged of the United States establishing long-term domination of the international political system, the influential Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer sought to capture the character of the unfolding geopolitical era. The term he used became a buzzword in then-emerging neo-conservative circles, and […]
Socialism or Reformism?
I We live at a time when resistance to the inequities that exist in this world and the struggle for a better world are almost totally detached from any striving for socialism. Climate change, imperialist aggression, forcible dispossession of peasants in the name of “development”, oppression of the tribal population, gender discrimination, and ecological degradation […]
There Is No Economic Justification for Deficit Reduction
Statement to the Commission on Deficit Reduction by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, and Vice President, Americans for Democratic Action, June 30, 2010 Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, thank you for inviting this statement. I […]
ICAHD Denounces Israeli Demolitions (and American Enabling)
July 14, 2010 After an unofficial nine-month “moratorium,” the Israeli government has returned with a vengeance to its policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. Yesterday, July 13, six homes were demolished in East Jerusalem. In Jabal Mukaber, the homes of the Tawil family (15 people) and the Masrawi family (six people) were demolished. In Beit Hanina, […]
The Magic Kingdom
Pacho Maturana, Colombian, a man of vast experience in these matters, says that football is a magic kingdom, where anything can happen. The recent World Cup confirmed his words: it was a strange World Cup. Strange were the ten stadiums where the matches were held, beautiful, immense, which cost a fortune. No one knows what […]
The Merkel Model Spreads to Japan
The European public debt crisis, artificially created by the puritan obtuseness of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has spread to even Japan. In fact, Naoto Kan, the new prime minister, mentioned Greece in a speech in which he claimed to fear the collapse of the Japanese economy under a heavy public debt equal to 230 percent […]
Can the European Welfare State Survive? Can National Public Radio Survive?
NPR wants to convince listeners that the European welfare state is on its last legs. While it tells listeners this, nothing in the piece actually supports this case. For example, it implies that growth is grinding to a halt in Europe because of its generous welfare state, noting that Europe is expected to grow just […]
A Lesson in Bad Faith: The Vienna Group’s Response to the Tehran Joint Declaration
The countries comprising the “Vienna Group” (i.e. USA, France, and Russia, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA) have expressed their “Concerns about the Joint Declaration Conveyed by Iran to the IAEA.” Iran has repeatedly declared that the Tehran Brazil-Iran-Turkey Joint Declaration was never intended as a final binding document, but as a basis […]
